“Somebody had to have taken them and buried them in the mountains,” David said.
Deacon laughed. “You actually think somebody found and moved over a hundred bodies in the dark and got them all out of there in just one night.” He snorted. “And I’m the one who’s hallucinating.”
“I agree that part is a mystery.”
“Occam’s razor,” Beth said. “The simplest explanation is usually true.”
“I see you have a theory,” David said.
“More like playing devil’s advocate. Let’s say the Reverend was right.”
“A psychologist saying this.” David sputtered in disbelief. “You’ve completely lost it. You know that, right?”
“I’m not saying what I believe,” Beth said. “Though yes, one might, as you put it, lose it if one accepted it as truth.”
Deacon stiffened in his seat. “Oh, you think…”
“Emily was always a true believer. I think she couldn’t handle the contradiction of loving a God who would do this to his followers, even with paradise as the reward.”
“Or maybe she thought she was fulfilling the deal the Rev made,” Deacon said. “The covenant he always talked about. She wanted to cross the black sea.”
The black sea. David shuddered. A term Jeremiah Peale started using after the Family moved to Red Peak in 2005.
“Yes,” Beth said. “That works too.”
“Stop,” David said. “Just stop. Please. Let her go and rest in peace.”
The server approached with their lunches and delivered them with brisk efficiency, as the tension at the table was obvious. David stared bleakly at his grilled chicken salad and wondered if he was going to be attending two more funerals soon. His friends had taken a long dive off the deep end.
One thing bothered him, though. Safe in his hiding place, he hadn’t seen any light show on the mountain, but he remembered hearing the rumbling blast, which rent the air like the horn of a giant ram. The noise had been so powerful, he’d felt it vibrating through his chest and heard the windows shivering in the panes, followed by a loud series of bangs, the pews being thrown around. Later, he’d assumed it was an earthquake, this being California, but the timing was a bizarre coincidence.
A coincidence, yes. Nothing more.
Even if the impossible were true, it didn’t matter to him anyway, not anymore.
4
CREATE
In the funeral home parking lot, the three childhood friends hugged.
Deacon Price was glad it was over. Burying Emily had left his soul raw, as if a cheese grater had run over it. His friends didn’t understand that when he was flirty or insensitive or cracking jokes at inappropriate times, he was holding back a scream.
Now he couldn’t wait to turn that shriek into music.
He offered David a lopsided grin. “Stay in touch, okay?”
“I was thinking we should try to meet up at least once a year. I’ll drag Angela along next time.”
“Sure thing.” Deacon knew his friend was full of it.
Beth fished in her purse and handed David a card. “If you can’t see us socially, see me professionally. If you ever need to.”
David smiled as he got into his car. “I’ve gotten very good at taking care of myself. But thanks.”
Deacon waved him out of sight, something inside him breaking. They’d once been best friends. He was glad the reunion was over, but a part of him wanted it to never end.
“Are you okay?” Beth said.
He appraised her. God, she was beautiful. Still Beth, but now all grown up. The same large dark eyes a boy could fall into. So much stronger now. And smart as hell. Alone of the survivors, she’d been able to go on to college, all the way to a doctorate in clinical psychology.
“You’re pretty awesome,” Deacon said. “How is it you never got married?”
She pursed her lips. “That’s not a polite question, you know.”
“I’m just surprised.”
She gestured to the gray snow fluttering around them. “If you’d like to keep talking, can we get out of this?”
He pointed out his battered Honda Civic coated in ash as fine as powdered sugar. “We could hop in Honey for a bit.”
Beth scrutinized his car, no doubt imagining grimy floors and seats covered in rock band detritus, which wasn’t far from the truth.
“Mine’s closer,” she said.
Deacon climbed into the immaculate interior of her Mercedes. You could eat off her seats, he mused, while mine look half-eaten.
She gazed through the dusted windshield at the funeral home. “Do you think Emily is in a better place?”
“Sure. Why not.”
“That’s not very convincing.”
“You heard the pastor. We really have no idea what comes after, so yeah, it’d be great. You want me to believe anything else, forget it. That’s how you end up with people singing hymns one minute and drinking Kool-Aid the next.”
Or in the Family’s case, communion wine mixed with cyanide, but not far from the method the Peoples Temple had used to kill themselves in Guyana back in the ’70s. He glanced down at a Latin proverb tattooed on his arm: A diabolo, qui est simia dei. Rough translation: Where God has a church, the Devil has a chapel.
“I struggle with it myself,” she said. “Being raised a believer while seeing what taking belief to its limit did to the Family.”
“So.” He smiled.
“What?”
“Why didn’t you ever get married? I don’t see a ring.”
She sighed. “Because nothing lasts.”
His heart thudded now, pounding pure bass in his ears. Beautiful. “Some things do. Some things last a lifetime.”
He leaned in to kiss her, and she returned it in a surprising burst of eagerness, devouring him. She tasted like wine and peppermint. His restless mind zeroed out into the strange nothingness one finds at the dead center of a startling noise. They broke for air, and he dove into her slim, soft neck, sucking and biting.
Beth moaned and gave him a gentle push back toward his side of the car. “Not the time or place.” She reached into her purse and produced a business card, onto which she wrote something.
Deacon took it. “Social or professional?”
“That remains to be seen.” She smiled. “I checked out some of your songs on YouTube. They’re dark as hell. I could give you a couple months of therapy on ‘Shadow Boxer’ alone.”
He chuckled. “Music is my therapy.” He didn’t add that this was close to being the literal truth. His interest in songwriting had started a long time ago, an offshoot of Dr. Klein’s poetry therapy.
Then he checked the card, on which she’d scribbled an address. An invitation? The heartbreak of another separation didn’t have to last.
“Santa Barbara,” he said. “That isn’t too far. You should come down and catch one of my shows.”
“Actually, I was thinking of something else. An expedition.”
“This sounds intriguing.”
“We should go back. To Red Peak. It’s been fifteen years. I’d like to see the place again for myself. See if anything surfaces that I don’t remember, or don’t want to remember.”